Smoldering Fire

Cavernous Congress Hall in down town Warsaw shook with chants and cheers. As the speaker strode to the podium, TV lights glared down upon his balding head and visibly strained face. Then some 3,000 stalwarts of Poland's Communist Party rose to their feet and sang: "May he live 100 years." All in all, it could have been a national birthday party for Party Boss Wladyslaw Gomulka--but instead it was the tensest moment in his nearly dozen years in power. After eleven days of nationwide student demonstrations, Gomulka, 63, finally spoke out in an effort to restore order to Poland. What he said was sur prisingly mild but, partially for that reason, it failed to mollify the rebellious students. As they began a third week of defiance of the regime, the students constituted a smoldering fire that could break out at any time and engulf Poland's Communist regime.

Hallway Sack Out. In hopes of getting the students to return to their classes, Gomulka pledged to "consider" grievances drafted by legitimate student groups, meaning those that met with rectors' permission. More important, he softened as "ill-considered" an antiZionist campaign that had passed off most of the blame for the unrest on Jew ish intellectuals. Gomulka, whose wife is Jewish, promised exit visas to Jews who want to move to Israel and en dorsed the majority of Polish Jews as loyal builders of socialism. In cavalier disregard of deepening unrest among intellectuals, however, he blasted liberal Writers Union members, whose balking at censorship had first rallied students, and at liberal professors, whom he labeled "small-time politicians with science degrees." He also announced that more than 1,200 "rabble-rousers and disoriented youth" had been arrested during the riots.

For the students, who have been demanding apologies from the regime, reinstatement for those expelled from school and fair press coverage, Go-mulka's speech was an official brushoff. Many continued cutting classes or staging sit-ins outside them, even after signs went up threatening expulsion--and a loss of draft exemption. At Cracow's Ja-gellonian University, students staged a sitdown strike for two days running. Warsaw University authorities locked the campus gates when thousands of students refused to attend lectures. At War saw's Polytechnical Institute, some 5,000 students sacked out in the hallways, playing cards, listening to Chopin tapes and tuning in Western news broadcasts, including reports on Czechoslovakia, where just the sort of liberalization they are demanding is unfolding. At week's end the students picked up their gear and returned to their homes, but classes were still canceled.

No Inclination. Like Czechoslovakia, Poland has been due for some top-level changes, but the chance that reforms will automatically come with them is dim. The last influential figure from a never strong liberal wing, Philosophy Professor Leszek Kolakowski, was booted from party membership two years ago. President Edward Ochab, tired and almost blind at 62, is expected to retire in time for the Polish party conference late next fall, and some observers think that Gomulka may lift himself upstairs to the presidency, allowing a younger man to undertake party chairmanship.

Whichever office becomes vacant, two men are in the strong running to fill it. They are Interior Minister Mieczyslaw Moczar, 54, the dark, somewhat mysterious boss of Poland's secret police and leader of the party faction of "partisans," or World War II underground veterans; and Edward Gierek, 55, youngest member of the Politburo and party chief in the Silesian mining and manufacturing district. Though Gierek advocates partial economic reforms in Poland's lackluster industries, neither he nor Moczar shows any inclination toward political reshaping of the kind that Poland's restless student-and intellectuals are agitating for.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.